1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method and system for providing an extended social network service (SNS), and more particularly, to a method and system for providing an extended SNS, in which the scope of personal relationships for information sharing is not limited to a one-on-one friend relationship between users in an SNS but is extended based on the friend relationship.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventional Web information search systems have problems providing information specific to a particular situation in real time and in a reliable manner. For example, Google™ of U.S and Naver™ of Korea, which are information search systems most widely used around the world, enable users to find necessary information on the Internet by providing most searched information or using other methods based on information stored on the Web. However, these information search systems cannot be used to share, in real time, information specific to a particular situation—such as information about today's lunch special in a local restaurant or an accident occurred during a company climbing competition—with related local acquaintances or company colleagues in a reliable manner.
Recently, various social network services (SNSs) based on social relations among people have been introduced. Most SNSs are used to share information based on social relations among people, such as family, school alumni, company colleagues, church members, and members of various communities.
SNS-based information sharing overcomes the above limitations of Web search and allows information specific to a particular situation to be shared among friends in a reliable manner. However, most of the conventional SNSs allow information to be shared among friends only. This may increase the reliability of shared information but limit the scope of information sharing only to friends.
In summary, Web information search and existing SNS-based information sharing methods and systems have many problems allowing information specific to a particular situation to be shared among socially related people effectively, widely, and reliably.
As a related art, Korean Patent Publication No. 2011-0002063 discloses a method of accessing reliable user-created content. In this related art, social relations are collected from a plurality of social network sites, and the collected social relations are combined to create user extended social networks for each user. That is, the related art requires collecting information from a plurality of social network sites. This may make it possible to collect reliable content but may not be desirable for extending a personal relationship in one social network site. In addition, collecting information from a plurality of social network sites incurs additional costs.